Ways to Design with Circles

The LC4 lounge is by Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand, and Pierre Jeanneret for Cassina. Operable porthole windows on the east facade offer ventilation.

The trip from garage to first floor is through a wood-clad spiral staircase that resembles a giant slatted barrel.

Cooke clad the building in a black-stained, sustainably-grown Canadian cedar, a durable choice that ages well and requires little maintenance. The dark glazing was chosen so windows appear seamless, accentuating the form of the building.

Architect Bergendy Cooke, who worked for Zaha Hadid and Peter Marino before returning to her home country in 2007, is an admirer of the strong, sculptural architectural forms that appear in Japanese and Spanish architecture. Outside Queenstown, she put her ideas into practice in a home that would be the benchmark for bc+a studio, her own venture. The combination bunk bed and playhouse is a whimsical gesture the architect designed specifically for her two daughters. The spaces are organized in such a way that they can play independently or together.

The first thing landscape designer Laura Cooper asked Devis and Purdy was to recall childhood gardens and outdoor play. In that spirit, she designed their backyard, integrating the high ground with the low just outside the “kids’ wing.” The resulting series of outdoor rooms on this quarter-acre is full of memory and play.

In another section of the yard, Cooper added varying-sized circular cement stepping stones, which lead toward an elevated planter filled with California-native plants.

In the bedroom wing, sunlight shines down from the Plexiglass bubbles. Steel in the cutaways reflects the light.

A Jutland, Denmark, house designed by Mette Nygaard and Morten Schmidt of the architecture firm Schmidt, Hammer & Lassen features a minimalist bathroom that's naturally lit with Plexiglass skylights. Read the whole story here.